“You give up your struggle for a footing in the world—­that’s what you want, isn’t it?” He pleaded, and she drew her hands away from her face.  He believed that?  He imagined that she was fighting just for a name, a position in the world?  She stared at him in amazement, and forced herself to understand.  Since he himself had cared for her enough to remain unmarried, since the knowledge of the mistake which he had made had grown more bitter with each year, he had fallen easily into that other error that she had never ceased to care too.

“We’ll make something of our lives, never fear,” he was saying.  “But to marry this man for his position, and he not knowing—­oh, my dear, I know how you are driven—­but it won’t do!  It won’t do!”

She stood in silence for a little while.  One by one he had torn her defences down.  She could hardly bear the gentleness upon his face and she turned away from him and sat down upon a chair a little way off.

“Stand there, Henry,” she said.  A strange composure had succeeded her agitation.  “I must tell you something more which I had meant to hide from you—­the last thing which I have kept back.  It will hurt you, I am afraid.”

There came a change upon Thresk’s face.  He was steeling himself to meet a blow.

“Go on.”

“It isn’t because of his position that I cling to Dick.  I want him to keep that—­yes—­for his sake.  I don’t want him to lose more by marrying me than he needs must”; and comprehension burst upon Henry Thresk.

“You care for him then!  You really care for him?”

“So much,” she answered, “that if I lost him now I should lose all the world.  You and I can’t go back to where we stood nine years ago.  You had your chance then, Henry, if you had wished to take it.  But you didn’t wish it, and that sort of chance doesn’t often come again.  Others like it—­yes.  But not quite the same one.  I am sorry.  But you must believe me.  If I lost Dick I should lose all the world.”

So far she had spoken very deliberately, but now her voice faltered.

“That is my one poor excuse.”

The unexpected word roused Thresk to inquiry.

“Excuse?” he asked, and with her eyes fixed in fear upon him she continued: 

“Yes.  I meant Dick to marry me publicly.  But I saw that his father shrank from the marriage.  I grew afraid.  I told Dick of my fears.  He banished them.  I let him banish them.”

“What do you mean?” Thresk asked.

“We were married privately in London five days ago.”

Thresk uttered a low cry and in a moment Stella was at his side, all her composure gone.

“Oh, I know that it was wrong.  But I was being hunted.  They were all like a pack of wolves after me.  Mr. Hazlewood had joined them.  I was driven into a corner.  I loved Dick.  They meant to tear him from me without any pity.  I clung.  Yes, I clung.”

But Thresk thrust her aside.